Sunt Lacrimae Rerum
by kincaidian
Summary: Spirit and Stein, a partnership made of moments and madness; written for the 1sentence challenge, Spirit/Stein.


A/N: Became utterly obsessed with this pairing a couple of days ago :) Enjoy!

Written for the 1_sentence challenge on LJ. There's not much continuity to this, so apologies in advance.

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#01 - Ring

Lust curls into smoky thick tendrils in his stomach; impatient, he opens his eyes to see Spirit carefully ease off his wedding ring before he slips his finger into Stein, smiling.

#02 - Hero

Spirit has a child to dote over and a city to protect and logically, he shouldn't be able to rush in, blue eyes blazing, the very second Stein's thoughts begin spiraling.

#03 - Memory

Before he was Death Scythe he was Spirit Albarn, and before Kami there was a steel-edged cloud-boy who kissed like fire.

#04 - Drink

They drink tea from measuring cups and stand side-by-side in the sunlight, not saying anything.

#05- View

"The view up here is terrible," Spirit tells him, and if not for the slightest hitch in his words, Stein couldn't have deduced his terror, not with his eyes closed, anyway; "How about we leave, huh, Stein?"

#06 - Hurricane

The roads have shut down in anticipation of the hurricane, so Spirit and Stein book into a rest house and maintain low-level Resonance as they curl against each other under the covers.

#07 - Wings

Stein's lab coat flares out behind him as he falls, and all Spirit can do is stare; Stein is an angel, and given wings, he flies.

#08 - Cold

"There's a draft," Spirit sounds irritable, but he's holding up a corner of his blanket, inviting Stein into the warmth of gangly limbs and too-bright hair: "Just get in already."

#09 - Red

Stein doesn't see it, but Spirit does; the thin red thread that occasionally spans continents, linking their pinkie fingers to each other.

#10 - Box

This place, this room; they're his, no matter how beautiful the boy with red hair and warm blue eyes banging his fists against the lid is.

#11 - Midnight

Come midnight, all his illusions will shatter and his madness will finally claim his body, black like cancer and as sweet as the rain.

#12 - Temptation

Stein's eyes flutter shut without his permission when Spirit kisses him for the first time; he wrenches them open furiously, fighting the kick of temptation in his stomach in favor of cataloging the flush of color on high on Spirit's cheeks.

#05 - Run

If Spirit knew how deep Stein wanted to cut into him, of the obsession and possessiveness and mirror-shattering madness, he would run, and Stein would never let him escape.

#14 - Music

Madness is a song they hear at the back of their heads when they resonate; a melody which is pitch-perfect with chaos and order, a very specific frequency that can shatter the whole world.

#15 - Silk

There is steel underneath the soft creamy silk of Spirit's skin; Stein will find it no matter what.

#16 - Cover

The only time Stein sleeps is when exhaustion physically knocks him over; _serves you right if I decided to cut you up, _Spirit thinks, before draping a blanket over his partner.

#17 - Promise

Spirit turns and carefully cups Stein's face with his hands, and says, perfectly drunk and perfectly serious, "I'm going to _protect_ you," and Stein momentarily loses the ability to breathe.

#18 - Dream

Spirit walks along the riverbed and it slows down for him like a friend with a secret to tell; all the unnamed trees and misspelled cities and the bleeding skies of Stein's dreamscape curl in towards Spirit, smitten by the graceful curve of his neck, the unflinching copper of his hair.

#19 - Candle

Stein doesn't expect much out of the holiday season, but he does reluctantly drag himself away from his experiments to buy those cookie-scented candles that make Spirit smile.

#20 - Talent

Stein's is feigning ignorance; Spirit's is forgiveness.

#21 - Silence

His thoughts crystallize, coalesce, then stutter to a halt, leaving his ears ringing with unfamiliar silence; the redheaded boy's smile widens.

#22 - Journey

"Sometimes I wonder if you even know how to slow down," Spirit says.

#23 - Body

Stein stops jerking away when Spirit presses his lips to the stitch marks, so he lets go of his hips and begins using teeth and tongue; it only takes a handful of seconds for the great and terrible meister to be reduced to a writhing, needy mess.

#24 - Strength

"You broke down my door," Stein states flatly, and Spirit flinches, and defends, "You sounded like you were _dying _in there, how was I supposed to know you had allergies?"

#25 - Mask

Spirit edges around the corners of the Death Room when Stein comes in, but what Shinigami-sama doesn't realize is that it's not because of nerves, but because he's trying for an angle that lets him see through the protective reflection of Stein's glasses.

#26 - Ice

Their combined wavelength reminds Stein of a glacier, sharp and deadly and slightly, subtly _wrong_, surrounded by the gentle acceptance of the sea.

#27 - Fall

He falls through layers of consciousness like a man without a parachute, and after the initial whiplash of receding Resonance, he is Spirit Albarn once more.

#28 - Forgotten

The scalpel is a cold, clinical realm of possibility against his temple; _that which cannot be forgotten shall remain._

#29 - Dance

When they're asleep, his body shifts when Stein's does, without thought or pre-planning; when they're fighting, the synchronization is sublime; it really doesn't make sense why he and Stein are such terrible dance partners.

#30 - Fire

They're stranded in the middle of nowhere and Stein wants to roast marshmallows.

#31 - Sacred

As much as he wants to see the world fragment and collapse inward, the quiet give of Spirit's flesh under his scalpel feels irreverent.

#32 - Farewells

Stein dreams of the perfect death; Spirit would be there, he thinks, holding him and saying his name as he softly and suddenly vanished away.

#33 - World

Spirit used to be mildly baffled by the teeth-grinding focus it seemed to take for most partners to achieve Resonance, let alone the fact that it looked like something they had to _do_ instead of something that simply _was._

#34 - Formal

Stein didn't go to Spirit's wedding, even though he received an invitation; instead, he stayed at home and dissected and dissected until he was up to his elbows in blood and his thoughts had gone blunt.

#35 - Fever

"I don't understand how you love me so much," Spirit mumbles against his collarbone, and Stein says nothing, enveloping his partner in a cocoon of long limbs and tender fingers as Spirit shivers and shakes.

#36 - Laugh

_There's something wrong with Stein's mouth, _Spirit thinks, still soaked from head-to-toe, holding the angry snarling cat a careful arm's length away.

#37 - Lies

He's never outright lied to Shinigami-sama before, preferring to stick to the nebulous grey area of omissions of truth; he crosses his fingers behind his back and says with a straight face, _of course I'm not going to go out looking for Stein. _

#38 - Forever

"Stay," Stein begs breathlessly when Spirit moves to pull out of him, "staystaystay."

#39 - Overwhelmed

_I'm too normal for this, _Spirit thinks, staring at his dilated blue eyes in the mirror and trying not to throw up or remember the delicious encroaching curl of madness of his partner's mind as they Resonated for the first time.

#40 - Whisper

It starts out as a whisper, and builds into a scream: "No, no, no, Stein, you're not doing this to me, not like this, open your eyes, you're not leaving me like this, _come back dammit_."

#41 - Wait

"I'll wait for you," the Spirit that lives in the in-between says, his voice catching, "I'll always be here, but it feels like I'm dying a little, every day."

#42 - Talk

Some nights he sees bloody fingerprints on the walls and feels scraping talons against his brain; he finds Spirit before it cripples him entirely and lets his partner talk, lets his words form a gentle carpet underneath the scratchy roughness of his dwindling sanity.

#43 - Search

Death Scythe drags Stein before shinigami-sama, both of them bloody, Stein not breathing right, but seemingly intact; "Found him," he crows, and no one even knew Death Scythe was looking.

#44 - Hope

For Stein, there is only single-minded determination; he will get Spirit back, or die trying.

#45 - Eclipse

After the spates where Stein doesn't recognize his own shaking hands and every jagged edge holds exquisite appeal, he's tired, tired enough not to notice when Spirit climbs into bed with him and presses his forehead against his, almost as if he wanted draw the madness into himself.

#46 - Gravity

"You're insane, you know that," Spirit says with a flicker of annoyance as they plummet towards their certain deaths.

#47 - Highway

Spirit is nothing more than a heart full of good faith and a soul stretching unerringly towards Stein.

#48 - Unknown

Spirit's partner is beautiful; beautiful like the wicked curve and serration of sharpened knives, beautiful like a fired bullet as it cuts through the air unforgiving and swift; beautiful like all the things that could hurt him.

#49 - Lock

His thoughts are slow and dark and dissonant and sad, and on the other side of the door, Spirit's still hiccupping sobs and packing his things and there's nothing Stein can do about it.

#50 - Breathe

"Stein, breathe," Spirit whispers with a laugh, once the sandpaper-rough panic in Stein's throat lessens and he can stop his volley of Iloveyouyou'remineIownyouIloveyoudon'tleave against Spirit's collarbone.


End file.
